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So to speak   /soʊ tu spik/   Listen
So to speak

adverb
1.
As if it were really so.  Synonym: as it were.
2.
In a manner of speaking.  Synonym: as we say.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"So to speak" Quotes from Famous Books



... have something important to say to you. I am much disturbed over your renewed determination to go away. In the face of the great work which is yours to do I do not understand how you can think of dropping it in mid-air, so to speak, to go away on an errand which is essentially selfish—as well as most unwise and full of danger. I don't understand this renewal of restlessness ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland

... had he disappeared so suddenly, this stranger with the gun? How she wished she had had the presence of mind to turn back into the temple to find him! Why had Noel spoken of him with such evident restraint? Had he been under orders so to speak? She almost resolved to ask him, but realized immediately that for some reason she could not. Besides, had he not said she would see him again? And when she saw him—when she saw him—again she had to still the tumult of her heart—doubtless she would tell herself how utterly ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell

... discern difficulties than to accept truths upon trust. I should, therefore, be inclined to place religion before him in a way that would appeal more to his affections than to his reason, and try to interest him in our Lord from, so to speak, a human point of view, without going into the mysteries connected with the Incarnation, and if possible without, at first, telling the end of the Gospel narrative. Speak of a Person—One Whom you love—Who might have lived for ever ...
— Wikkey - A Scrap • YAM

... my dear, these things have to be done legally, of course. (Moving to R. to settee, thinking it out.) I believe the proper method is a nullity suit, declaring our marriage null and—er— void. It would, so to speak, wipe out these ...
— Mr. Pim Passes By • Alan Alexander Milne

... perhaps the learned have persuaded you that these lines are only a fanciful illustration of the variety and beauty of love." "Certainly," said Daphnaeus, "what else could they mean?" "Hear me," said my father, "for the heavenly phenomenon compels us so to speak. The rainbow[127] is, I suppose, a reflection caused by the sun's rays falling on a moist cloud, making us think the appearance is in the cloud. Similarly erotic fancy in the case of noble souls causes a reflection of the memory, from things which ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch

... in the little restaurant, which but for ourselves was deserted. The stranger leant over towards me, and a shiver passed over me at the nearness of this man whom I did not know, and to whose extraordinary experience I had, so to speak, by my own doing, been made a party. I wanted to put an end to it now, I wanted to say, "Yes, I have been very much interested. Thank you very much for telling me," and then to get up and go away. But at my first movement he ...
— The Tale Of Mr. Peter Brown - Chelsea Justice - From "The New Decameron", Volume III. • V. Sackville West

... there are seventy fighting craft; but not in commission and all require overhauling. Half of the submarines will not—er—'sub,' so to speak." A ghost of a smile crossed Heinrich's lips. "The complement of torpedo vessels has been reduced from fifteen to twenty-five per cent, and the Atlantic Fleet needs five ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln

... about this stack-burning affair," interposed the beak. "I'm annoyed over it. I been on the wrong lay, so to speak, all this morning; but that never lasts long with me. I got the perpetrator in my eye now, in his naked guilt; and, take my word for it, Mr. Connor, I'll bring him to book. I'll make an example of him. I'll make him smoke for it. It was an open question this forenoon; but to show how ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy

... bring with her any fortune, so to speak, in the way of gold or acres; but she brought something far better into my father's home,—a sweetness of disposition, and a large measure of common sense, which made her, in all respects, the devoted helpmate of her husband. Her happy cheerful ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth

... JIM,—I think that regardless of your frightful neglect I shall be obliged to write you another note expressing sense of under-obligationness to you for that letter. It is the best thing I've run up against so to speak. As a result of it I am to have the pleasure of hastening Detroitward. There I shall register at the House. I shall sit in the window with my feet higher than my head, and wear a one-hundred-and-fifty-dollar-a-week air of nonchalance. ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)

... witnessed much, and come through a great deal, both in regard to the times wherein I have lived, and the out-o'-the-way adventures in which it has been my fortune to be engaged. Indeed, though I say it myself, who might as well be silent, I that have never stirred, in a manner so to speak, from home, have witnessed more of the world we live in, and the doings of men, than many who have sailed the salt seas from the East Indies to the West; or, in the course of nature, visited Greenland, Jamaica, or ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir

... than even those which had reduced them to a more monotonous and more lasting servitude? There was despotism, just as in pure monarchies, and there was privilege, just as in the very closest aristocracies. And both obtruded themselves in the most offensive, and, so to speak, crude form. Despotism was not tapered off by means of the distant and elevation of a throne; and privilege did not veil itself behind the majesty of a large body. Both were the appurtenances of an individual ever present and ever alone, ever at his subjects' ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... Markovians. They are peaceful and creative, but only a few generations behind them are pirates who were not fit to sit in the Councils of civilized beings. They have no tradition of culture to support them. It knocks the props out from under them, so to speak, to have it known what lies behind them. They cannot be friends with such a man. They cannot even endure ...
— Cubs of the Wolf • Raymond F. Jones

... welcome, whatever house or company he entered; he could fall in with any mood, take up any subject, sympathize in anybody's concerns. That was part of his secret of power, but that was not all. There was about him an aura of happiness, so to speak; a steadfastness of the inner nature, which gave a sense of calm to others almost by the force of sympathy; and the strength of a quiet will, which was, however, inflexible. All that was restless, uncertain, and unsatisfied in men's hearts and lives, found something in him to which they clung as ...
— Diana • Susan Warner

... happening is that in many places the Natives are being driven off land where they have been from time immemorial, so to speak. They consider the Act as an attempt to drive them into slavery, and numbers of them are being placed in the position of having no place to which to ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje

... greater popularity than Mandeville's; while we describe but eighty-five manuscripts of Marco Polo's, and I gave a list of seventy-three manuscripts of Friar Odoric's relation,[5] it is by hundreds that Mandeville's manuscripts can be reckoned. As to the printed editions, they are, so to speak, numberless; Mr. Carl Schoenborn[6] gave in 1840, an incomplete bibliography; Tobler in his Bibliographia geographica Palestinae (1867),[7] and Roehricht[8] after him compiled a better bibliography, to which may be added my ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... state that the cause of this change was the gradual amalgamation of the diamond-mines and conflicting interests, which was absolutely necessary to limit the output of diamonds. As a result the stranger soon perceives that the whole community revolves on one axis, and is centred, so to speak, in one authority. "De Beers" is the moving spirit, the generous employer, and the universal benefactor. At that time there were 7,000 men employed in the mines, white and black, the skilled mechanics receiving as much as L6 a week. Evidence of the generosity ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson

... Miss Abbott, impressed for the first time. "When I tried to pave the way, so to speak—to hint that he had not behaved as he ought—well, it was no good at all. He couldn't ...
— Where Angels Fear to Tread • E. M. Forster

... think that this here sandal-wood trader should turn out for to be Henry's father and the widow's mother—no, I mean the widow's husband,— an' a pirate, an' a deliverer o' little boys and gals out o' pirates' hands—his own hands, so to speak—not to mention captings in the Royal Navy, an' not sich a bad feller after all, as won't have his liberty on no account wotiver, even if it was gived to him for nothin', and yet wot can't git it if he wanted it iver so much; ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne

... reticency. And then, why should I upset myself? A woman is not necessarily either a doll or an angel to me. She is a human being, very much like myself. And I have come across too many dead souls lying so to speak at the foot of high unscaleable places for a merely possible dead body at the bottom of a quarry to ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad

... major-general in the Army of Northern Virginia. However, as he was not yet ready to take up his new duties, Hindman was suffered to assume the command in the West; but Magruder's rights held over. They were held in abeyance, so to speak, temporarily waived.[500] ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel

... "Mysticism is the pretension to know God without intermediary, and, so to speak, face to face. For Mysticism, whatever is between God and us hides Him from us." "Mysticism consists in substituting direct inspiration for indirect, ecstasy for ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge

... he spoke with an even American intonation, "you wish to be supplied with a guest who will make all other luncheon-parties look, so to speak, ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring

... a little healthy excitement, Mr. Redfield," said the Secretary, smoothly; "stirs our blood, so to speak, and teaches us to be watchful. We really owe those ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler

... not merely that the total number of murders committed in a given space and time is entirely the effect of the general circumstances of society, but that every particular murder is so too—that the individual murderer is, so to speak, a mere instrument in the hands of general causes that he himself has no option, or, if he has, and chose to exercise it, some one else would be necessitated to take his place; that if any one of the actual murderers had abstained from the crime, some person who would ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... England. Charles Reade, with keen dramatic gusto, had just smuggled himself out of that city in the bottom of a cab. English gold had been found on the insurgents, the name of England was in evil odour; and it was thus—for strategic reasons, so to speak—that Fleeming found himself on the way to that Italy where he was to complete his education, and for which he cherished to the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... doubts of this gentleman before," continued the detective, warming gradually with his subject. "A man of my experience doubts every one in a case of this kind, and I had formed at odd times a sort of side theory, so to speak, into which some little matters which came up during the inquest seemed to fit with more or less nicety; but I had no real justification for suspicion till the event of which I speak. That you had evidently formed the ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green

... which marked the line of unqualified disapproval. This was evident even in the way he carried the major's bag,—holding it out by the straps, not as became the handling of a receptacle containing a gentleman's wardrobe, but by the neck, so to speak,—as a dog to be ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith

... of it; but industrialism was not, at that time, in the line of my tastes, and I know now that it wasn't what I was meant for. Above all, I wanted to get away, to see new places and rub up against different ideas. I had reached a time of life—the top of the first hill, so to speak—where the distance draws one, and everything in the foreground seems tame and stale. I was sick to death of the particular set of conformities I had grown up among; sick of being a pleasant popular young man with a long line of ...
— The Long Run - 1916 • Edith Wharton

... is very important to understand here that there were two courses of action still open to the disappointed capitalist confronted by the new peril of this real or alleged decay. First, he might have reversed his machine, so to speak, and started unwinding the long rope of dependence by which he had originally dragged the proletarian to his feet. In other words, he might have seen that the workmen had more money, more leisure, more luxuries, more status in the community, and then trusted to the normal instincts of reasonably ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton

... he is most anxious to render himself agreeable) render himself extremely disagreeable. Of course there must be some measure of thoughtlessness and forgetfulness,—some lack of that social caution, so indispensable in the complication of modern society, which teaches a man (so to speak) to try if the ice will bear him before venturing his entire weight upon it,—about people who are unlucky in the way of which I am speaking. But doubtless you have known persons who were always saying disagreeable things, or putting disagreeable questions,—either ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various

... foot in diameter. Within this was an endless screw worked by powerful engines. With a working model the professor had demonstrated that when the endless screw was revolved it acted on the water just as another sort of screw does in wood. The water coming in through the shaft served as a rope, so to speak, and the screw, acting on it, pulled the craft ahead or to the rear, according to the direction in which the ...
— Under the Ocean to the South Pole - The Strange Cruise of the Submarine Wonder • Roy Rockwood

... difficulty was to succeed in putting a certain space between accumulated sensations. Before that combustion of hazy ideas called comprehension can take place, air must be admitted between the emotions. There air was wanting. The event, so to speak, ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... by this that Captain Berselius's smile was, so to speak, hung on a hair-trigger; there was always a trace of it on his face round the lips, and in ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole

... immediately returned to the states to make his second trip and to visit his wife and Miss Mollie Bent in Kansas City, Missouri. His mother did not know he was there. When he arrived in Kansas City from his second trip he decided to put his "spurs" on, so to speak, so he bought him a fine carriage, a team of prancing horses, and went like a "Prince of Plenty" to the home of ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus

... get into Kansas and find out what that fabulous Commonwealth was really like, so we became anxious, as we heard the gossip about the "Old North State," to enter it and form our own conclusions. The great drawback to an attempt to see North Carolina, however, lies in the fact that North Carolina is, so to speak, spread very thin. It has no great solid central city occupying a place in its thoughts and its affairs corresponding to that occupied by Richmond, in its relation to Virginia. Like Mississippi, it is a State of small towns and small cities. Its metropolis, Charlotte, had, by the ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street

... before, my gentle lady, and she was good to me in a sick way. I would have died in the hard winter if she hadn't fed me and nursed me, so to speak. I shall love to see her again. To dick a puro pal is as commoben as a aushti habben, the which, my precious angel, is true Romany for the Gentile saying, 'To see an old friend is as good as a fine dinner.' Avali! Avali!" she nodded smilingly. "I shall be glad to see her, ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume

... signs sailors know so well, as do farmers, but which are inexplainable according to any natural meteorological laws—the hands now thought, on being so suddenly summoned again on deck, and forced to leave their untasted meal just as they were in the very act, so to speak, of putting it into their mouths, and with its tantalising taste and smell vexing them all the more, that the 'old man' only roused them out again from sheer malice and devilry, to make another fresh tack or short board, ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson

... answered the other. "I think it's because the place itself, so to speak, seems to happen and not merely to exist. Perhaps that's what old Picasso and some of the Cubists are trying to express by angles and jagged lines. Look at that wall like low cliffs that juts forward just at right angles to the slope of turf sweeping up to it. That's like a silent ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton

... gold. An extraordinarily mild atmosphere prevailed in this underground structure, which was also full of a singular perfume in which a musty odour of hot wax mingled with a suggestion of damp earth. But this was only the background, the canvas, so to speak, of the perfume, and was lost under the embroidery of fragrance which covered it, the faded gold, as it were, of oil in which long kept aromatic herbs had been steeped, and old, old incense powder dissolved. It was a weird ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... his behaviour, his way of speaking through his teeth, his sudden wooden laugh, the absence of smiles, his exclusively political or politic-economical conversation, his passion for roast beef and port wine—everything about him breathed, so to speak, of Great Britain. But, marvelous to relate, while he had been transformed into an Anglomaniac, Ivan Petrovitch had at the same time become a patriot, at least he called himself a patriot, though he knew ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev

... young man lost his way on the Cumberland mountains and perished of exposure. Three months afterwards his body was found, his faithful dog still watching beside it. Scott was a lover of dogs—loved them warmly, individually; so to speak, personally; and all ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... writing-desk, for he knew, from Sebastiani's chaff, that this was the spot of the hiding-place. And the hiding-place could not be a complicated one, seeing that Daubrecq had not remained in the study for more than twenty seconds, just long enough, so to speak, to walk in and walk ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc

... would have taken me for a demon, and would probably have shot at me. A moderate breeze was blowing, and it wafted me gently down the street. If it had blown me against a tree I would have seized it, and have endeavored, so to speak, to climb down it; but there were no trees. There was a dim street-lamp here and there, but reflectors above them threw their light upon the pavement, and none up to me. On many accounts I was glad that the night ...
— A Chosen Few - Short Stories • Frank R. Stockton

... modified the thing with a double-polarity field somewhat similar to the molecular motion field except that it works on a sub-nucleonic level. As a result, about half of the lead fed into the chamber became contraterrene lead! The atoms just turned themselves inside out, so to speak, giving us an atom with positrons circling a negatively charged nucleus. It even gave the neutrons a reverse ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell

... same scrupulosity that Dr. Dolliver had always declined to enter the medical profession, in which his old instructor had set him such heroic examples of adventurous dealing with matters of life and death. Nevertheless, the aromatic fragrance, so to speak, of the learned Swinnerton's reputation, had clung to our friend through life; and there were elaborate preparations in the pharmacopoia of that day, requiring such minute skill and conscientious fidelity in the concocter that the physicians were ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... assumed to be in single line-ahead. The 'advance squadron,' it should be noted, was not to be ahead of the two main divisions, but in such a position that it could be moved to strengthen either. The name seems to have been due to the mode in which the ships composing the squadron were employed in, so to speak, 'feeling for' the enemy. On 19th October six ships were ordered 'to go ahead during the night'; and, besides the frigates, two more ships were so stationed as to keep up the communication between the six and the commander-in-chief's flag-ship. Thus eight ships ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge

... that, like most Caucasian Christians, I had been laying too much stress on the definition. The Trinity had, so to speak, come between me and the Godhead. I had, unconsciously, attached more importance to God's being Three than to His being God. Seeing Him as Three I instinctively saw Him as Three Persons. Seeing Him as Three Persons I did not reflect that the word Person as applied to God must ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King

... as this force is, in one point of view, to that of steam, it is very inferior to it in other respects. It is great, so to speak, in intensity, but it is very small in extent and amount. It is capable indeed of lifting a very great weight, but it can raise it only an exceedingly little way. Were the force of such an engine to be brought into action beneath such a block of granite as we have described, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various

... least, as if their principle were to satisfy the more pressing wants first. But are the more pressing wants satisfied now? When I think of acquiring for myself one of our luxurious dwellings, I am deterred, for, so to speak, the country is not yet adapted to human culture, and we are still forced to cut our spiritual bread far thinner than our forefathers did their wheaten. Not that all architectural ornament is to be neglected even ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau

... felt that in him were two persons, so to speak: one really bewildered, the other wise and self-possessed. This wiseman explained to himself that all might be imagination, that no one had discovered him, that no one was searching, and that he could ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus

... judge from the mustache cup with the gilt "Papa" inscribed, that Sara's home did not meticulously reflect the newer McKinley period, so to speak, of the cut-glass-china closet, curio cabinet, brass bedstead, velour upholstery, ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst

... of parliament, had conciliated general esteem, and won extensive respect, as a private gentleman, from both sides of the house; but as a politician he had scarcely been noticed, nor had he taken any pains to make himself felt in debate: his irruption, so to speak, upon the ranks of the ministerialists, was sudden and effective. Mr. Disraeli has written an elaborate memoir of the noble lord, which exaggerates his capabilities and achievements, and in a style less eloquent than ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... uncommon and remarkable being of a higher order, so to speak, than himself, had been driven into him in so many ways ever since she came into the world, that he looked upon the assertion ...
— One of Life's Slaves • Jonas Lauritz Idemil Lie

... down on the blessings of Providence—turning my back upon them, so to speak," he remarked, after the first hunger was over, "reminds me of a man who took the gold medal in natural science. He had got his botany off by rote, so, when he was travelling between Toronto and Hamilton, a friend that was sitting beside him said, 'Johnson, what's in that field ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell

... long future before me, I should like above all things to study London with a dark lantern, so to speak, myself in deepest shadow and all I wanted to see in clearest light. Then I should want time, time, time. For it is a sad fact that sight-seeing as commonly done is one of the most wearying things in the world, and takes the life out of any but the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... multitude of pleasures, and these among the purest and the best, are superfluities, bits of good which are, to all appearance, unnecessary as inducements to live, and are, so to speak, thrown into the bargain of life. To those who experience them, few delights can be more entrancing than such as are afforded by natural beauty, or by the arts, and especially by music; but they are products of, rather than factors in, evolution, and it is ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley

... great service in my performances, for while I was executing my tricks, I could see everything that passed around me, and thus prepare to foil any difficulties presented me. This exercise had given me, so to speak, the power of following two ideas simultaneously, and nothing is more favorable in conjuring than to be able to think at the same time both of what you are saying and of what you are doing. I eventually acquired such a knack in this that I frequently invented new ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne

... of fact, is, when one follows his usual custom, an unconscious process like the mechanical part of reading or writing. It is only when he is trying to be a bit more formal or fastidious than is habitual with him that a man gets tangled, so to speak, in ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney

... so to speak, entirely on its own axis; it revolved between the two great events of the year, the summer Polchester Fair, the winter County Ball, and those two great affairs were conducted, in every detail and particular, as ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole

... forget it's a confidential one, but I'm devilish right about it, young Georgie!—it's this: Fanny uses your mother for a decoy duck. She does everything in the world she can to keep your mother's friendship with Eugene going, because she thinks that's what keeps Eugene about the place, so to speak. Fanny's always with your mother, you see; and whenever he sees Isabel he sees Fanny. Fanny thinks he'll get used to the idea of her being around, and some day her chance may come! You see, she's probably afraid—perhaps ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington

... can be got hold of, is more promising material to work with than the man who sits about the home and lets others maintain it. They all recognize a common middle ground where the two groups merge into each other; but they see decided differences in the two "wings" so to speak, outside ...
— Broken Homes - A Study of Family Desertion and its Social Treatment • Joanna C. Colcord

... can or cares to contradict. When these biographical reminiscences come within the memory of middle-aged men, then this said memory doth run somewhat to the contrary of that of the veteran painter who put the cart before the horse, so to speak, in his artistic career, seeing that he commenced with carriages and ended with cows. As far as Mr. Punch is concerned, the Baron has already denied that DOUGLAS JERROLD was ever the Editor of Mr. P.'s paper; and Mr. COOPER's account of the Punch dinners ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., November 29, 1890 • Various

... may be seen in the Barberini gallery at Rome, at the Pitti palace in Florence, and at the Museum of the Louvre. We had given him the name, too, because the distinctive feature of this youth's character was his lively sense of the beautiful in Nature and Art,—a sense so keen, that his mind was, so to speak, merely the shadowing forth of the ideal or material beauty scattered through-out the works of God and man. This feeling was the result of his exquisite and almost morbid sensibility,—morbid, at least, until ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine

... passage like this we know, so to speak, that the hunt is up and the whole field tearing after the quarry. But Racine, on other occasions, has another way of writing. He can be roundabout, artificial, and vague; he can involve a simple statement in a mist of high-sounding words ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey

... the great majority of Americans, upon reaching the age of natural selection, are elected to the American Institute of Arts and Ethics, which is, so to speak, the Ellis Island ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers

... storm-drawing, both for the overwhelming power and gigantic proportions and spaces of its cloud-forms, and for the tremendous qualities of lurid and sulphurous colors which are gained in them. All its forms are marked with violent angles, as if the whole muscular energy—so to speak—of the cloud, were writhing in every fold, and their fantastic and fiery volumes have a peculiar horror—an awful life—shadowed out in their strange, swift, fearful outlines, which oppress the mind more than even ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin

... and we laughed. Of course Susan began the inevitable question, but Barbara hurriedly notified some dereliction with regard to gravy, and my small daughter was, so to speak, hustled out of the conversation. Jaffery by way of apology for his Gargantuan appetite discoursed on the privations of travel in uncivilised lands. A lump of sour butter for lunch and a sardine and a hazelnut for dinner. We were to fancy ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke

... It is now Thelma Andrews, my secretary. She changed her name with her appearance and politics. I have been training her since last August. This is her first official appearance, so to speak." ...
— Poisoned Air • Sterner St. Paul Meek

... statesmen who, so to speak, sprang from the earth under Trajan, were not improvised. They had served in preceding reigns; but they had enjoyed but little influence, and had been cast into the shade by the freedmen and favorite slaves of the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various

... the way clear before me; I had dodged through their lines, so to speak, when I gave Conklin the slip, and I could ride straight for Drew and catch ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand

... subjects will undertake any thing against you without my consent, you are ill informed of the absolute authority I possess over all my subjects, and the perfect obedience which it is their glory to render me on all occasions. So to speak, the birds do not dare to fly, nor the leaves to move upon the trees without my orders; and how then shall my subjects presume to go to war ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr

... most friendly in my disposition towards Shock, and wanted to pay him in my mild way for saving my life, he persisted in looking upon me as an enemy, and threw clay, clods, and, so to speak, derisive gestures, whenever ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn

... is not infallible, and antique dealers sometimes make mistakes, offering, so to speak, "new lamps for old." The eyesight of some dealers may not be so good as that of others; or perhaps one dealer does not know so well as another the difference between, say, an old English Chippendale chair and a New York reproduction; or again, perhaps, some dealers ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street

... Tanqueray, too, who had kept it up even longer and more successfully. At last they had been caught, the two so insolent in their swift evasion of pursuit. Their fall, so to speak, enabled the hunter to come up with them. People who had complained that they could never meet them, who had wanted to meet them solely that they might talk about them afterwards, who had never been able to talk about them at all, had now abundant ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair

... themselves be the greatest sufferers. My expostulation met with a various reception. All the persons to whom it was addressed had been tolerably successful in persuading themselves of the innocence of their calling; and what remained of doubt in their mind was smothered, and, so to speak, laboriously forgotten. Some of them laughed at my arguments, as a ridiculous piece of missionary quixotism. Others, and particularly our captain, repelled them with the boldness of a man that knows he has got the strongest side. But ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin

... would I, Ma'am, if I were in your shoes. But believe me, you can do more, being a mere woman, so to speak, than ...
— Angels & Ministers • Laurence Housman

... had been prolonged, and so the Stores were only, so to speak, half open. But as Mrs. Otway stepped through into the shadowed shop, the owner of the Stores, Manfred Hegner by name, came forward ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... and ineffective vehicles for the conveyance of abstract ideas, wherefore the capacity to form and entertain such ideas may be taken to be innately inferior in the Native brain. That the language of a people embodies, so to speak, in objective form the intellectual progress made by it is certainly true, and it will be well, therefore, to state briefly the actual and potential value of the Native speech as compared ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen

... Populus with still greater scorn. "Where has he the power? Am I not the intendant? Is it not I who alone control the dues in my own person? Yes, gentlemen, who will deny that I hold, so to speak, the keys of heaven and earth in Grelot, and whom I bind shall be bound and whom I loose shall be loosed, notwithstanding the impotent cajolery of all the ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall

... are still two important excellences to be recorded of this school of painting—its variety, and its importance as the expression, the mirror, so to speak, of the country. If we except Rembrandt with his group of followers and imitators, almost all the other artists differ very much from one another; no other school presents so great a number of original masters. The realism of the Dutch painters is born of their ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various

... so to speak, soaked into the inmost core of the nerve-fibre, it has got a hold which it will take months and even years to dislodge. And before your remedies can reach it, it will often have done irreparable damage. An illustration of the care taken to spare the nervous system is furnished ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson

... life we meet with a person or incident that is symbolical. It's nothing in itself, yet for the moment it stands for some eternal principle. We accept it, at whatever costs, and we have accepted life. But if we are frightened and reject it, the moment, so to speak, passes; the symbol is never offered again. Is this nonsense? Once before a symbol was offered to me—I shall not tell you how; but I did accept it, and cherished it through much anxiety and repulsion, and in the end I am rewarded. There will be no reward this time. I think, from such ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster

... small; still, with an ample kerchief in my hand, my whiskers might, I thought, be concealed. I was still fidgeting with these arrangements when Jackson knocked at his door. The servant admitted him without remark, and he presently entered the room, carefully locked the door, and jolted down, so to speak, in ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various

... course, the financial undertaking is considerable: it's not like an investment, where there is some reasonable hope of a return: it's merely a matter of charity! The money's—gone, so to speak. ...
— The Servant in the House • Charles Rann Kennedy

... and struck warmly on the faces of the hinds coming home from the fields. The mighty storm that raged while Cromwell lay a-dying made all the oak-woods groan round about here, and tore the thatch from the very roofs I gaze upon. When I think of this, I can almost, so to speak, lay my hand on Shakspeare and on Cromwell. These poor walls were contemporaries of both, and I find something affecting in the thought. The mere soil is, of course, far older than either, but it does not touch one in the ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith

... with the awful and elemental forces which drive the world than a legion of lawless minor poets. She approached the universe with real simplicity, and, consequently, with real fear and delight. She was, so to speak, shy before the multitude of the stars, and in this she had possessed herself of the only force which can prevent enjoyment being as black and barren as routine. The faculty of being shy is the first and the most delicate ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton

... monde," as the French proverb says, "ne peut donner que ce qu'elle a;" and it might seem that an egg which has succeeded in being fresh has done all that can reasonably be expected of it. But there was a bloom of punctuality, so to speak, about these eggs of Bourg, as if it had been the intention of the very hens themselves that they should be promptly served. "Nous sommes en Bresse, et le beurre n'est pas mauvais," the landlady said with a sort of dry coquetry, as she placed ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James

... were, however, in all probability, nothing more than eyelashes in a wrong place, as the eyes of Miss Brass were quite free from any such natural impertinencies. In complexion Miss Brass was sallow—rather a dirty sallow, so to speak—but this hue was agreeably relieved by the healthy glow which mantled in the extreme tip of her laughing nose. Her voice was exceedingly impressive—deep and rich in quality, and, once heard, not easily forgotten. Her usual ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... colored man who once owned a mule named Boomerang. Sampson was the colored servant's last name, and he declared he had chosen the one "Eradicate" because in his younger days he was a great cleaner and whitewasher, "eradicating" the dirt, so to speak. ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton

... (at due intervals and with due notice given) they entertained as handsomely as the Lord Lieutenant himself, were not a household to be bounced (so to speak) into promiscuous or extemporised hospitality. For an ordinary dinner-party, Dorothea would pen the invitations three weeks ahead, Endymion devote an hour to selecting his guests, and Narcissus spend a morning ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... in two weeks; "Bertha," in three and a half. We have said that Emma Lazarus was a born singer, but she did not sing, like a bird, for joy of being alive; and of being young, alas! there is no hint in these youthful effusions, except inasmuch as this unrelieved gloom, this ignorance of "values," so to speak, is a sign of youth, common especially among gifted persons of acute and premature sensibilities, whose imagination, not yet focused by reality, overreached the mark. With Emma Lazarus, however, this sombre streak has a deeper root; something of birth and temperament ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus

... Birkett, "I have not any of the things here that—er—I generally use for the purpose," and she thought regretfully of a big box at home which contained a sort of rolling stock of hideous articles that travelled, so to speak, between herself and her friends from one bazaar to another, and reappeared, a sort of symbolical merchandise, a currency in a nightmare, at all the fancy sales held in ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell

... by the white and colored people here to speak in an advisory way, but we decided to remain silent until we can hear from reliable sources in the North and East, and you have been designated as one of the best. So to speak, our city is in a turmoil—in suspense. You have doubtless heard of the great exodus of negroes to the North, and we presume you have given it some thought, and even investigated it. Please give the benefit of your findings ...
— Negro Migration during the War • Emmett J. Scott

... over him with the very shutting of the door not only that there never was a man so cursed in his children (that thought had occurred to him before) but that, of the three, Gwenda was the one in whom the curse was, so to speak, most active, through whom it was most likely to fall on him at any moment. In Alice it could be averted. He knew, he had always known, how to deal with Alice. And it would be hard to say exactly where it lurked in Mary. Therefore, in his times ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair

... contrary, are different. They have to make some provision for the future, so to speak. How do you like it, oh men! the idea that you, with your handsome personages and fascinating ways, are used only as a kind of insurance office? This is the case very often, however, though you may ...
— Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Girl - Sister of that "Idle Fellow." • Jenny Wren

... knowledge is an entirely different thing. It is not acquired in any way, but is, so to speak, a faculty of the soul; not the animal soul, that which becomes a ghost after death, when lust or liking or the memory of ill deeds holds it to the neighborhood of human beings, but the divine soul which animates all the external forms of the ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins

... is a jolt in the machinery has landed them in expensive disasters, time out of mind. And then, it hopelessly cuts off all margin of income for every other purpose. It is all rather discouraging for the hero of this petty, yet gigantic tussle, for he works, so to speak, in a hostile camp, with no sympathy from his entirely unconscious spouse, whom popular sentiment nevertheless regards as the gallant protector of his ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird

... chemical affinities with other elements, and existing therewith in a gaseous condition. But, as the solidifying process went on, and as the vegetable world afterwards made its appearance, the carbon became, so to speak, wrenched from its combinations, and being absorbed by trees and plants, finally became deposited amongst the ruins of a former vegetable world, and is now presented to us in the ...
— The Story of a Piece of Coal - What It Is, Whence It Comes, and Whither It Goes • Edward A. Martin

... Flanders and in France, likewise, have been printed innumerable sheets from designs by Giulio, of which, although they are very beautiful, there is no need to make mention, nor of all his drawings, seeing that he made them, so to speak, in loads. Let it be enough to say that he was so facile in every field of art, and particularly in drawing, that we have no record of any one who has ...
— Lives of the most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 06 (of 10) Fra Giocondo to Niccolo Soggi • Giorgio Vasari

... obviously answers to the ideas of the judges, and turns, so to speak, on theological rather than ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France

... the manufacturers," cried a spinner at the meeting in Bolton, "that wages depend. In periods of depression the employers, so to speak, are only the lash with which necessity is armed; and whether they will or no, they have to strike. The regulative principle is the relation of supply to demand; and the employers have not this power. . . . Let us act ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon

... Numerous strolling companies were engaged for shorter terms; travelling virtuosi often played with the members of the band. Special days and hours were fixed for chamber music, and for orchestral works; and in the interval the singers, musicians and actors met at the cafe, and formed, so to speak, one family." Something more than creative genius was obviously required to direct the music of an establishment of this kind. A talent for organization, an eye for detail, tact in the management of players and singers—these qualities were all indispensable for the performance ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden

... pardonable conjecture that Byron took to writing sacred or, at any rate, scriptural verses by way of giving pleasure and doing honour to his future wife, "the girl who gave to song What gold could never buy." They were, so to speak, the first-fruits of ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron

... Emma's cheerful rejoinder. "One of the 'There was the Door to which I found no Key' variety, so to speak." ...
— Grace Harlowe's Problem • Jessie Graham Flower

... withheld me from the task, was in my sense of the unfamiliarity of the ordinary reader with the characters, events, and, so to speak, with the very physiognomy of a period ante Agamemnona; before the brilliant age of matured chivalry, which has given to song and romance the deeds of the later knighthood, and the glorious frenzy of the Crusades. The Norman Conquest was our Trojan War; an epoch ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... done, with the natural tact which rarely deserts the truly honest man in his hour of extremity. He spoke of Lewis as he had known him, at school and college and in many wild sporting expeditions in desert places, and slowly the people kindled and listened. Then, so to speak, he kicked away the scaffolding of his erection. He ceased to be the apologist, and became the frank eulogist. He stood squarely on the edge of the platform, gathering the eyes of his hearers, smiling pleasantly, arms akimbo, a man at his ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan

... In the course of the ascent to the top (which is by an easy staircase), the inclination is not very apparent; but, at the summit, it becomes so, and gives one the sensation of being in a ship that has heeled over, through the action of an ebb-tide. The effect UPON THE LOW SIDE, so to speak—looking over from the gallery, and seeing the shaft recede to its base—is very startling; and I saw a nervous traveller hold on to the Tower involuntarily, after glancing down, as if he had some idea of propping it up. The view within, from ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens

... except only that to the countenance of the Jewish prophet there has been imparted a rapt and inspired look, wholly beyond any that even Phidias could have fixed upon the face of Jove. He who wrought this head must have believed in the sublimities of the religion whose chief minister he has made so to speak them forth, in the countenance and in the form; and yet who has ever heard of ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware

... most delicately hinted Pearson, "is—more usual—in the evening—in England." After which he added, "So to speak," with a vague hope that the mollifying phrase might counteract the effect of any apparently implied aspersion ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... the line, while they were yet hanging to the tails of the turkey-buzzards, so to speak, Bobby burst out with: ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston

... man are past interpretation. Here is an individual who lures a girl from an oriental harem, attires her in disgusting garments, smuggles her on board a steamer, where he claps her, so to speak, under hatches, and has little if anything to do with her, sets her penniless and ticketless in a London train, and then goes off and blows his brains out. Where is ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke

... at Jawbones for a fortnight. At the end of that time Dot's knee had, so to speak, submitted and returned to barracks, and she could resume her ordinary work. Effie went to Bournemouth, where she took ...
— If Winter Don't - A B C D E F Notsomuchinson • Barry Pain

... then I should call him something more than a mathematician. Now, this is exactly the claim which I have since come to propound for Christianity. Not merely that it deduces logical truths, but that when it suddenly becomes illogical, it has found, so to speak, an illogical truth. It not only goes right about things, but it goes wrong (if one may say so) exactly where the things go wrong. Its plan suits the secret irregularities, and expects the unexpected. It is simple about the simple truth; but it is stubborn about the subtle truth. It will admit ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton

... contrary, I will accept nothing but minor sums—so to speak, the fractional shillings; though I confess I am always bewildered ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... turned, and soon saw that the theory on which I had been insisting in" Life and Habit" was in reality an easy corollary on his system, though one which he does not appear to have caught sight of. I saw also that his denial of design was only, so to speak, skin deep, and that his system was in reality teleological, inasmuch as, to use Isidore Geoffroy's words, it makes the organism design itself. In making variations depend on changed actions, and these, again, on changed views of life, efforts, and designs, in consequence of changed conditions ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler

... high principles but intemperate habits,—that is to say, it was in a thorough mess. The nice little curiosities and willingnesses of a child were in a jumbled and thwarted condition, hacked and cut about—the operators had left, so to speak, all their sponges and ligatures in the mangled confusion—and Mr. Polly had lost much of his natural confidence, so far as figures and sciences and languages and the possibilities of learning things were concerned. He thought of the present world no longer as ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells

... a brotherly kiss, but even at that—and in the resigned way John had explained it there was little room for a girl's being excited—Joy felt a little dazed. But she didn't intend to let John see it. She had rented him for the month, so to speak, and, though it hadn't specially occurred to her, probably this sort of thing was all in the month's work... It was as near as the wishing ring could bring her to a ...
— The Wishing-Ring Man • Margaret Widdemer

... stroking his downy lip. "You see my mother's rather an exceptional person. When the governor was alive she hardly ever went out anywhere, you know, and all the people who came to our house in Yorkshire had to bring their pedigrees with them, so to speak. It was beastly dull! But now my mother has taken to 'studying character,' don'cher know; she likes all sorts of people about her, and the more mixed they are the more she is delighted with them. Fact, I assure you! Quite a change has ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli

... futility of the policy. "The philosophers," he said, "have with one hand sought to shake the throne, with the other to upset the altars. Their purpose was to change public opinion on civil and religious institutions, and the revolution has, so to speak, been effected. History and poetry, romances and even dictionaries, have been infected with the poison of incredulity. Their writings are hardly published in the capital before they inundate the provinces like a torrent. The contagion has spread into workshops ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury

... on—and that was all right; but we jumped to the conclusion that that was their way of getting around —and that was all wrong. The wings ain't anything but a uniform, that's all. When they are in the field—so to speak,—they always wear them; you never see an angel going with a message anywhere without his wings, any more than you would see a military officer presiding at a court-martial without his uniform, or a postman delivering letters, or a policeman walking his beat, in plain clothes. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... nature, true to life, the very image, the very picture of; for all the world like, comme deux gouttes d'eau[Fr]; as like as two peas in a pod, as like as it can stare; instar omnium[Lat], cast in the same mold, ridiculously like. Adv. as if, so to speak; as it were, as if it were; quasi, just as, veluti in speculum[Lat]. Phr. et sic de similibus[Lat]; tel maitre tel valet[Fr]; tel pere tel fils[Fr]; like master, like servant; like father, like son; the fruit doesn't ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... and, like Sam Weller after leaving the witness- box, he has said just as little respecting Mr. Pickwick as might be, "which was precisely the object he had in view all along." But it almost seems as though one required to be "brought up" in Pickwick, so to speak, thoroughly to understand him. No true Pickwickian would ever have called Tuckle the Bath Footman, "Blazer," or Jingle, "Jungle." It were better, too, not to adopt a carping tone in dealing with so joyous and ...
— Pickwickian Manners and Customs • Percy Fitzgerald

... true. All the life of the camp was now done away with, even the training camp of France, where the boys had finished their war education, so to speak. But if they did not have to drill there was plenty ...
— Ned, Bob and Jerry on the Firing Line - The Motor Boys Fighting for Uncle Sam • Clarence Young

... Pomona-like than ever in the bright sunshine that was just getting the better of the hoar-frost. She held in her hand a letter, to which she seemed to cling as a credential—a sort of letter of marque, so to speak. "'Tis a bidding from her young ladyship," said the interpreter collaterally. She herself said, in the soothing voice of yesterday:—"From her young ladyship, who has gone to away London unforetold, last night. She will have me get you ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... lies—see here." (Joe removed his pipe from his mouth and held up his fore-finger by way of being very impressive.) "I've travelled pretty well now in every quarter of the globe; gone right round it in fact, and found that it is round after all,—'cause why? I went in, so to speak, at one end from the west'ard an' comed out at the same end from the east'ard, though I must confess it all appeared to me as flat's a pancake, always exceptin' the mountainous parts of it, w'ich must be admitted to be lumpy. ...
— Digging for Gold - Adventures in California • R.M. Ballantyne

... it was rumored, on the very best terms with that lady. Madame de Serizy had carried him off from the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, who, it was said, had "thrown him over," one of the phrases by which women avenge themselves on happiness they envy. Lucien was in the lap, so to speak, of the High Almoner's set, and intimate with women who were the Archbishop's personal friends. He was modest and reserved; he waited patiently. So de Marsay's speech—de Marsay was now married, and made his wife live as retired a life ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac

... Until he had kissed her hair, she had not known that she loved him—or rather loved an invisible presence that had enveloped her in an atmosphere of sympathy, of protection, that had painted itself, so to speak, in heroic colors and proportions against her darkness, that had revealed both strength and tenderness in touch and movement, and ...
— Snow-Blind • Katharine Newlin Burt

... war are perhaps never at any time very numerous. Most people sometimes want war, and a few people always want war. It is these last who are, so to speak, the living nucleus of the war creature that we want to destroy. That liking for an effective smash which gleamed out in me for a moment when I heard of the naval guns is with them a dominating motive. It is not outweighed and overcome ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... so to speak, diametrically opposed to Eugene. He had his mother's face, and a covetousness and slyness of character prone to trivial intrigues, in which his father's instincts predominated. Nature has need of symmetry. Short, with a pitiful countenance suggesting the knob of a stick carved ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola

... not, I don't know who he can have been; perhaps this stranger: he gave no name. Well, we had our biltong together, and the Stranger put himself outside a good deal of the very little brandy I had left. We got yarning, so to speak, and I told him a few of the curious adventures that naturally fall to the lot of a man in those wild countries. The Stranger did not say much, but kept playing with a huge carved walking-stick that he had. Presently he said, "Look at this stick; I bought it from a boy on a South African ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang

... got a very good training for suffrage when it should come. It did no harm, nor did the fervour of the other side do good. The two parties got healthfully tired with the exercise and "go" of it all, and at least they stirred the pot. But whatever they said or did, suffragists and antis never, so to speak, "met". The subject, from some occult sense of decorum, was tabu. If an anti were setting forth her views when a suffragist entered the room she instantly ceased and began to talk about humidity or ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown

... habitual to him, he resolved that he would live at Vandon, that in all things he would be as they had been. He would become that vague, indefinable, to him mythical personage—a "country squire." Fortunately, he had a neat leg for a stocking. It was lost, so to speak, in his present mode of dress; but he felt that it would appear to advantage in the perpetual knickerbockers which he supposed it would be his lot to wear. It would also become his duty and his pleasure to marry. For those who tread in safety the slippery heights of married life he felt a true ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley

... of 1660 produced a most wonderful effect on Virginia. All was changed in the twinkling of an eye, so to speak. The cavaliers, who had been sulking for years under the mild rule of the commonwealth, threw up their hats and cheered from Flower de Hundred to the capes on the ocean, as only a victorious political ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick

... have sped a bullet so squarely into the heart of his victim at twenty yards or more. The first phenomenon might perhaps be explained, they agreed, on the hypothesis that the mishap to his brother coming at the very moment of the fight's beginning, unnerved Jess and threw him out of stride, so to speak. But the second was not in anywise to be explained excepting on the theory of sheer chance. The fact remained that it was so, and the fact remained ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb

... every worker to have a certain amount of knowledge of stitches, for they are, so to speak, the language of the art, and though not of first importance, still there is a great deal in stitchery. The needlewoman should be absolute master of her needle, for there is a great charm in beautifully carried ...
— Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving • Grace Christie

... assent to that solution. On the favourable view of her policy, it must be held to have rested on a fixed determination not to make the Netherlands her field of battle. For Sluys, one of the forts which she held, so to speak, in pawn from the States, was taken after a stubborn siege and at immense cost both in money and men by Parma, simply because Maurice of Nassau was too uncertain as to her real intentions to make a serious effort for its relief. Confidence in her had sunk to the ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes

... out of the profession; it has even been hinted that she could, had she been so minded, have married an impressionable young Austrian nobleman of independent means who was madly in love with her; but she appears to have considered it preferable to become 'an old man's darling,' so to speak, and to have selected the middle-aged chevalier rather than someone whose age ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew

... of the flower out of the green leaves of some old club moss or similar form? The latter seems to me at least by far the higher mode. And to have created a ground-pine which could give rise to a rose seems far more difficult and greater than to have created both separately. It requires more genius, so to speak. It gives us a far higher opinion of the ground-pine; does it disgrace the rose? We can look dispassionately at plants. The rose is still and always a rose, and the oak an oak, whatever its origin. And I believe that we shall all readily ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler

... and that of the South against the Federation,—both the repressive measures of England against the colonies, and of the Federation against the South,—were in themselves founded on an indefeasible right, and abstractly defensible; and that the "casting vote," (so to speak,) in both cases, depends, not upon any wordy denial of the right, but upon a thorough estimate of all the attendant conditions, and prominently of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various

... was very slow, for the boat was constantly being anchored, so to speak, by the men rowing in and holding on by the hanging boughs of trees, while Brazier cut and hacked off bulb and blossom in what, with glowing face, he declared to ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn

... Pali texts, and we can safely say that no such biography was in existence then." Beal declares that the Buddhist legend, as found in the various Epics of Nepaul, Thibet, and China, "is not framed after any Indian model of any date, but is to be found worked out, so to speak, among northern peoples, who were ignorant of, or indifferent to, the pedantic stories of the Brahmans. In the southern and primitive records the terms of the legend are wanting. Buddha is not born of a royal family; he is not ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood

... on each side of a number of killed and wounded. The officer in direct command always reported to me personally whatever had happened during the time he was out—the result of his reconnoissance, so to speak, for that war the real nature of these excursions—and on one occasion the colonel in command, Colonel Conrad, of the Fifteenth Missouri, informed me that he got through without much difficulty; in fact, that everything had gone ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... him! Great God, the cats, snakes and other monsters which, so to speak, slipped through Thy fingers at Creation, so delighted Beelzebub that he imitated Thy patterns—but he finished them off better than Thou didst; he put them in a human skin, and now they stand in rank and file with the rest of Thy humanity, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various

... too often is." This is plain speaking, and one wonders how many marriages would ever take place if this precept were carried out. It is true that much has to be revealed after marriage. The {96} lover has only seen his sweetheart when she has placed herself on view, so to speak. They were both kept in check by the uncertainty of their position. The husband sees his wife under all circumstances, in mentally trying moments, in physically unbecoming situations. In fact, she has to appear before him ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux

... who are, so to speak, "native" to that realm of nature, none are perhaps better known to the Christian world than the Archangels. These exalted Beings were human at a time in the earth's history when we were yet plant-like. Since ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel

... "Yes; he has been, so to speak, throwing his hat up ever since he heard you were coming, Miss Tresilyan," was the reply. "I suppose he calculated on your vocal talents; there's the nuisance of having an European reputation, you are always expected to do something for somebody's benefit. I hope you'll indulge ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence

... For, so to speak, he took the tallow, and he said to himself, Now, here's tallow—an unpleasant animal fat: let's see ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn

... matter too briefly. The fair way to begin, if you love Mrs. Dowey, is to say to her that it is a pity she has no bed. If she is in her best form she will chuckle, and agree that the want of a bed tries her sore; she will keep you on the hooks, so to speak, as long as she can; and then, with that mouse-like movement again, she will suddenly spring the bed on you. You thought it was a wardrobe, but she brings it down from the wall; and lo, a bed. There is nothing else in her abode (which we now see to contain four rooms—kitchen, pantry, bedroom, ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie

... possibility of marrying her, however, which attracted Mr. Roscorla. He honestly believed, judging by her kindness to him, that if he seriously tried he could get her to marry him—in other words, that he might become possessed of eight thousand pounds a year. This money, so to speak, was within his reach; and it was only now that he was beginning to see that money could purchase many pleasures even for the middle-aged. He made a great mistake in imagining, down in Cornwall, that he had lived his life, and that he had but to look forward to mild enjoyments, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various

... electric action Mr. Hope-Jones sought not only to obtain a repetition of the utmost quickness, but also to throw the reeds and other pipes into vibration by a 'percussive blow,' so to speak; being in this way enabled to produce certain qualities of tone unobtainable from ordinary actions. Soundness and smoothness of tone from the more powerful reeds, and great body and fullness of tone as well as depth from the pedal stops, are ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller

... stories told in different parts of the Aryan domain. No barbaric legend, of genuine barbaric growth, has yet been cited which resembles any Aryan legend as the story of Punchkin resembles the story of the Heartless Giant. The myths of Michabo and Viracocha are direct copies, so to speak, of natural phenomena, just as imitative words are direct copies of natural sounds. Neither the Redskin nor the Indo-European had any choice as to the main features of the career of his solar divinity. He must be born of the Night,—or of the Dawn,—must travel westward, must ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske

... which range no particular name has been given. The Hoosac and Taconic ranges may be considered as a portion of the great Appalachian system of eastern North America, of which the Green Mountains of Vermont are a continuation; while the third hilly belt may be regarded as a side-show, so to speak, to the main exhibition of nature's mighty upheavals. In this belt Wachusett is by far the grandest elevation, and Worcester County may well be proud of the majestic pile in her midst; but as it has been so recently described ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various



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